


Leave What's Heavy Behind

by electricteatime



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: 2nd person POV but it's poetic so go with it, Anxiety, Depression, Gen, M/M, Minor suicidal ideation, Todd Typical Self Depreciation, Todd is very in love with Dirk, and Dirk loves him too, character study (sort of?), it's not all bad I promise! I just wanted to warn people, mentions of drinking, mentions of drug use, this makes it sound depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricteatime/pseuds/electricteatime
Summary: Maybe he's not fate. Maybe he's chance, or destiny, or karma, but he won't go away no matter how you try to make him, and you don't know if you even want him to. He brings something with him, exciting and terrifying andnew. He spills truths dragged up from somewhere you'd hidden them long ago like he's talking about the weather. Like they're not facts you’d do anything not to have to hear from outside your own mind. Like he's not shaking you apart from your foundations, leaving you wondering if you'll be able to rebuild.You're not supposed to fall in love with him, but you're in free fall before you even have chance to think to stop yourself.***A semi-poetic semi-character study of one Todd Brotzman, the lies he tells himself, and the truths Dirk Gently knows.





	Leave What's Heavy Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> I've been working on this one for a while now, and to be honest I'm not 100% sure how to describe it. If you like my more poetic-y stuff then this may be one for you, but other than that I'm probably going to have to let it speak for itself. 
> 
> There's some heavy themes here, mostly around depression, guilt, and self loathing. It's Todd, so it gets pretty miserable, but then Dirk is there too and it's less so, which is about as much as I can give you on this one I'm afraid. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it anyway, and please be careful if you're easily triggered by low moods. 
> 
> Title is from Heavy by Birdtalker.

There’s always been something missing in you. Something knocked out of place, or not quite right. Something that makes you just a little too sad, a little too angry, a little too empty when you reach for a feeling you know you’re meant to have, only to find it isn’t there. 

Your joy never feels as bright, your sadness somehow deeper and darker than those around you. Time drags on longer for you, days feel like months, feel like years. An unending cycle that you’re far too young to have fallen into. It makes you angry and apathetic, even when getting yelled at for skipping class one to many times, you can’t bring yourself to care. And at the same time you care too much, highly strung and overthinking, wrecked with anxiety. Not for yourself, not _really._ But for a handful of people you manage to hold close, you’ve always known there is _nothing_ you won’t do for them. You accepted, somewhere, that being a disappointment is standard fare for you now. That letting people down is the thing that comes most naturally to you. You’re plagued, especially in the good times, with the feeling that it’s never going to last. It makes it okay, you think, to put yourself between them and any danger. 

You managed to work out quite some time ago that you’re a danger to them too, you drag people down with you when you go, so much so that you stopped reaching out when you feel it coming, just in case. Whether you’re the first line of defence, or the last one standing between danger and the people you care about, you can stop someone from hurting them, and they’ll be much less likely to be hurt with you out of the picture. Two birds, one stone. 

In your head, it makes perfect sense.

***

When you’re young, all you care about is music. Listening to it, making it, playing it. You get your first guitar when it’s almost as big as you are, and your fingers can’t stretch to make a chord. Your parents get you a violin, and tell you that you can have the guitar when you’ve learned to play it. You’re angry, because the guitar is _electric_ and it makes _noisey_ music, but the violin is music all the same, and it’s your parents agreeing to let you play _something_ after you spent so long begging them for lessons. It fits your hands much better, and the first time you pull an _actual_ chord from it you can feel whatever it is that’s missing in you slide a little further into reach. 

As soon as you start playing, you don’t stop. You play violin because your parents make you, piano because there’s one in your grandma’s house. Your guitar, even when your fingers still aren’t big enough, because it’s _loud_ and it’s _raw_ and it feels _right_. You try bass for a while and it’s fun, but not quite the same. You play drums, and you like it, but you prefer playing melodies to keeping beats. Clarinet, because your mom has one in a drawer upstairs and you want to try _everything_ you can use to make music with, even if it doesn’t quite fit for you. 

You never can hack playing the flute. It drives you mad, and you tell anyone that asks that it isn’t a real instrument anyway. 

But the thing about music is that you’re _good_ at it. You know how to put things together the right way to make it sound good. You’ll practise for hours on end to get better, to be perfect. If listening to it fills you up with so many feelings you forget how empty you feel, _playing_ it gives you a way to never have to feel that way again. As long as you’re playing, you’re feeling something, and when you feel something you don’t want to feel, you can just play it out and let it go. 

It’s therapy. The only therapy that works, and it’s all you want to do for the rest of your life. 

You’ve never loved anything as much as this, and you’re sure you never will.

You’re _wrong_. 

***

She is tiny, and loud, and you love her so much you think your heart might burst with it. In the moment she stops crying and looks at you, you know you would go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe. 

The first time you hold her, she wraps a tiny hand around your finger. The first time she smiles at you, you smile wider than you thought you ever could. When she says the first sound that can be interpreted as an approximation of your name, you pretend you aren’t crying even through your laughter. You watch her work out how to stand, wobbly and uncertain as she takes the few steps she needs to get to you, and you raise her tiny arms high in victory when she manages it, even if she mostly falls into your lap. She’s very good at hitting things, so you give her a pair of drumsticks. For a long time, she mostly uses them to hit you, but she can’t do it hard enough to hurt yet, so for the most part you let it slide. 

The fights come later, when she’s bigger, and louder, and your parents start working longer hours leaving you alone together more often. And it’s okay, because when you’re good together you’re _really_ good, but no amount of closeness will stop a fight over the remote. Over who ate the last of the cereal. Over _‘I was not in your room!’_ Kicking and hair pulling and slap fights become par for the course, and while you’re happy she can defend herself you really wish she did it less with you. 

You go away to college, and you miss it more than you ever thought you would. 

***

You don’t even remember the first time you lied about it. 

College is a haze. Even now, you struggle to remember a lot from that time. You go to class a lot less than you should, go out a lot _more_ than you should. You feel lost and alone and far from home, paying thousands of dollars for something you don’t even _want_ to study to try and make your parents happy. You drink, and drink, and drink some more. You take god knows what from god knows who, trying to fill up that empty space that only seems larger now the person you care about most isn’t here, and the one thing you want to do with your life seems impossible. 

The weight that likes to drag you down is sitting on your shoulders, whispering in your ear. When you aren’t trying every chemical, emotional, or physical form of escape you can get your hands on, you spend days at a time lying in bed, staring at the wall. You get emails you don’t read, essays you don’t hand in. You’re bad at eating and even _worse_ at keeping yourself going. You take up smoking, and it gives you something to do with your hands. When you drop the ash on yourself by accident, you don’t even really feel it. 

The self destructive spiral that has been waiting for you all your life is here, and you aren’t strong enough to fight it off on your own. 

You don’t have to, though. 

It turns out that you’re not the only one who likes to use music to cope. It turns out that you aren’t the only one studying something you hate. It turns out, that when you throw a group of people who are barely adults and barely coping who love to play music together, you get a band. 

You get a _good_ band. 

You’ve had bands before, as a kid with friends on the street, as a teen in your garage or other people’s basements. Usually just things that let you practice together, let you jam out songs together, and most of them would end before summer was over. This band is different though. This band is people who’ve practiced for long enough to be confident in their playing. It’s people who have _also_ been in and out of bands, who like the same music you do, who know what sound they want to make. Who want to do this forever. 

When you start playing shows, it feels like maybe you can. Something you’ve wanted so badly for so long is just within your reach, and you are young, you are stupid, you need money. 

You know how to get it. 

Just once, you tell yourself. Just one lie. You need it for testing you say, you can tell them the tests were negative. Nobody needs to know, and nobody will get hurt. Your parents can spare it, and when you make this work, you can pay them back. 

One lie, you find out later, is never just _one_ lie. 

***

When she has her first attack you aren’t there. You’re away, playing a show you can only play because you’re saying you have what she has. You’ve been meaning to cut it out for some time now, the lies have been getting harder to keep track of, but it always turned into one more, one more, _one more_. 

You stop lying, tell them you got better, but it’s too late for that to make a difference. They can’t afford treatments for her, they can barely afford her medication. 

The weight of guilt had been growing with the time you’d spent lying to them, but now it crashes over you like a wave. Like a tsunami. You’re going to drown, but you can’t drown, because you have to try and make up for this, for all of it. She never has to find out what you did.

So you live with the guilt. You make more bad decisions, more mistakes. You destroy your band, because you need the money, but also because you don’t deserve it. It’s a product of lies, a reminder that you placed your own happiness well above anyone or anything else, and you don’t know how to reconcile that now. You don’t know how to be happy now. You don’t think you’d deserve it if you did.

When they find out you stole their gear, everything they say to you is something you already know. 

Even if nobody finds out that you lied, you’re going to make sure you pay for it. 

You don't think there's such thing as redemption for you anymore. 

***

Even though it feels like it shouldn't, life goes on, and you realise quickly just how much it takes to keep your head above water.

You'd thought the lies would stop once you’d told them you'd gotten better, but they don't. She has hope, and it's _false_ hope, but it's hope you _can't_ take away from her because you've already taken so much, she's already fighting so much, and when she tells you that some days it's the only thing that keeps her going it cuts into you deeper than anything else ever has. The sword impaling you is one of your own making though, and every time you tell her it could get better you just push it in a little deeper.

You cycle through jobs, usually months at a time, and you manage somewhere in the middle to stop caring what that feels like. You need the money, _she_ needs the money, and if you're working three jobs at once, running only on coffee and the knowledge that rent is due in a week, that's your own fault. It's the least you can do, you tell yourself. It's more than you deserve.

The darkness creeps back in, threatening to swallow you, to drown you, to eat you alive. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that you can't look yourself in the eye anymore. It doesn't matter that you can't look at yourself at _all_. It doesn't matter that you hate your job, and everybody there hates you. It doesn’t matter that you fall into and out of bed with people whose faces you barely remember, let alone their names. It doesn’t matter that even the fleeting human touch leaves you emptier than before. It doesn't matter that you can't remember the last time you woke up in the morning feeling like you'd actually slept. It doesn't matter that you can barely make ends meet once Amanda has what she needs. It doesn't matter that some nights you sit on the floor in your bathroom and cry and cry and _cry_. It doesn't matter that you get angry at yourself afterwards for having the audacity to think you have any right to be upset, to be hurt by any of it. It doesn't matter that some days the last thing on your mind before you go to sleep is the gentle hope that maybe you won't wake up. It doesn't matter that the guilt of having such a selfish thought eats away at you for days afterwards. It doesn't matter that sometimes when she hugs you, it feels like the only thing keeping you together. It doesn't matter that it's always too brief to make any difference.

It doesn't matter.

And when you catch yourself slipping up, feeling sorry for yourself or wishing things were different, you remind yourself of what you did and why this is where you are. When you catch people seeming worried about you or feeling sorry for you, you push back with snide comments and an acerbic nature, pushing people away because you don't want them to get too close when deep down you know they're going to be nice to you, and you don't deserve their kindness.

You don't deserve anything.

You wonder if it counts as hating yourself if you've got a damn good reason for it. 

You wonder if you can face another day.

You get up in the morning and carry on anyway. She's the only reason you haven't given up by now, and that's both a blessing and a curse. If the rest of your life is spent like this, it's nothing compared to what you've done, and it's a small price to pay to make sure she never has to know why.

***

Fate barrels into your life; impossible, uncompromising, and dressed in yellow. 

Fate starts following you around like a lost dog. Like he knows you. Like you have answers.

_Fate_ is already giving you a headache.

***

Maybe he's not fate. Maybe he's chance, or destiny, or karma, but he won't go away no matter how you try to make him, and you don't know if you even want him to. He brings something with him, exciting and terrifying and _new_. He spills truths dragged up from somewhere you'd hidden them long ago like he's talking about the weather. Like they're not facts you’d do anything not to have to hear from outside your own mind. Like he's not shaking you apart from your foundations, leaving you wondering if you'll be able to rebuild. 

He reads every terrifying part of you that you try to deny like it's written all over your face, and you start to wonder if it is. If it has been all along. It's been a long time since anyone has seen you, has cared to look more than a cursory glance, has cared to ask your name, but here he is and he won't stop looking. Won't stop reading and digging and pulling out the rot that you're trying so desperately to cling to, until he's dragged out the very worst of it all, and you feel for the first time in years like you can _breathe_.

You expect him to leave after that.

He doesn't.

The problem is that pulling it out of you leaves an open wound, and if you don’t disinfect your whole _life_ it will fester and start to rot all over again. Better to burn it all out in one go than leave it to worm its way back in, only that means telling _her_. 

You don’t know if you’re strong enough to see her look at you the way you look at yourself. 

***

She grew up too fast, you think. But you were always there to cheer her on when she did something to be proud of. You were there to pick her up when she needed it. You were there to step in and punch some asshole in the face because he made her cry, and _maybe_ she could have done it herself, and _maybe_ you got walked home by the cops, but she’s your _sister_ and you’ll be _damned_ if you let anything hurt her. You _promised_. 

But life doesn't work like that.

There are forces beyond your control, things you can't stop no matter how much you want to, and sometimes it turns out that the monster you should have been protecting her from was inside of you all along.

For the longest time you'd thought that seeing her in pain was the worst thing in the world.The way your heart beat fast and your throat choked up knowing all the anger and love in the world couldn't stop her disease was a kind of torture you would have taken a thousand times over if it would give her just one day’s rest. But becoming the source of her pain feels like someone has reached into your chest and torn out your lungs, and you don't even have the breath to tell her you're sorry. You break everything you touch, and for the first time you wish you'd kept her at arms length if only to save her from _this_. You lied and you cheated and you took her down with you. She doesn't need you anymore, and you don't know what that makes you now, but you have nobody to blame but yourself.

***

You blame him. 

He’s the thing that’s new, the thing that told you it was a good idea, the _only_ solid thing in the way your life has been turned upside down in these past few days. He’s convenient, he’s persistent, and he’s _there_. It’s startlingly easy, in your grief, to push the blame his way the minute he slips up, and you know even then, before the words leave your mouth, that he doesn’t deserve it. 

You hurt him. You hurt him and you hope it’s enough to keep him away once this is over, because you don’t want to hurt him again. You know you will eventually if he stays. You try to push him out of your life without hurting him more, but you _know_ how easily the things you touch turn to ash.

Despite this. Despite everything that happens in the following days. You’re the one that goes back, in the end. 

The apology never passes your lips, but it sings through every inch of you in the only way you know how to convey it, to the only person who might be able to read it on you. The moment he looks at you, really _looks_ , you know he understands, and it terrifies you to be seen so clearly. 

You let his gaze linger anyway. 

***

Karma has never sent a clearer message than when you find yourself screaming at the sight of your skin consumed by fire. Somewhere in the back of your mind, the childhood phrase _liar, liar_ makes itself known. You haven’t got time to listen, because you’ve lost him. You’ve lost everything.

***

_But._

You find him again. 

Not fate this time. Not chance, or destiny, or karma. Not any of the things you’d thought the first time he’d climbed through your window. You know better now. You know _him_. 

Bright and shining, even without the yellow. 

_Hope_.

Your new world only makes sense with him in it.

***

You're not supposed to fall in love with him.

But he's like daybreak after a night that seemed to stretch on forever. Like the melting of snow and the first bloom of spring. Something hopeful, and scary, and exciting, and new. Something good. Something beautiful. Something a little broken past the rest of it. Something lost. Something lonely. Something that reaches out to you. Something that makes you want to reach back.

You're not supposed to fall in love with him, but you're in free fall before you even have chance to think to stop yourself. 

The solid ground beneath your feet is ripped away, and it feels so easy to lean in and let it take you.

***

He doesn’t ask before he touches you, though you know he wouldn’t if you spoke up. Every brush of his hand sends sparks down your skin, and when he wraps his fingers around your wrist to pull you into some great unknown, you wonder how your knees stay strong enough to carry you. It’s always brief, fleeting, hurried. If he’s looking for excuses to touch you, you find ways to give them to him, and when he leans into your side and the end of a long day you have to stop yourself from pulling him closer. You always want him closer. You have never known what it is to want so much. You don't know if it's okay to want more. But your heart is a treacherous thing, and it always takes more than it’s owed, even if he might be more willing than most to give it what it wants.

***

Somewhere down the line he kisses you, and he tastes the way you always knew he would. Like sunlight, and ice cream, and liquid gold. It runs down your throat and collects in your stomach, warm and bright and glowing into places you’d thought would be impossible to reach ever again. His hands are soft, nervous when he cups your face like you’re something delicate, and you want to laugh at the irony because if anyone is going to be destroyed by this, it isn’t you. 

You don’t deserve him, and you know it. 

The only problem is getting _him_ to believe that, because he won’t listen when you warn him, you know that by now, and worse still he won’t believe you if you insist. You’re too selfish to walk away from this on your own, too desperate to believe that if he can see something worth redeeming in you then it _must_ be true. You need him to push you away because if he doesn’t you’ll never leave, and you’re only going to hurt him if he lets you in. You’d managed it before when you barely knew anything about him, god only knows what you could do to him now. 

You love him. You love him and it hurts because you can't keep him, can’t let him know even if he deserves more than anyone you’ve ever met to know just how loved he is. You can’t give him hope just to do what you always do to people you care about, not him. You _can’t_. 

But you can’t stop kissing him either. 

It’s soft and sweet, but you turn it into something else, something desperate and hungry like you’re asking him to stay and run all at once, because what you want and what you should do are fighting out in your head like they always do, and you’re going to make the wrong choice. You’re dragging him closer, maybe trying to scare him off, but he doesn’t shy away from you the way you thought he would. Instead he pulls _you_ closer, kisses _you_ deeper like he wants the same things you do, and maybe he does but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to give it to him. When he presses you into the bed you think it might be okay to let him take it. Like destroying him passively is somehow better than doing it with your own two hands. 

When you offer it to him (and not a moment before), he takes and he takes like he can’t get enough. You wonder how he can stand the taste of you, the sight, the smell, before you remember that even the scent of decay is sweet at first, that before something rots it ferments. He’s drunk on you, incapacitated. It won’t be long before you turn sour on his tongue. 

You’ll take what you can in the moments between.

***

He doesn't spit you out, even when you think he should. Not even when you ask him to.

***

Sometimes he looks at you like he loves you so deeply you forget what hating yourself feels like. 

Sometimes it makes you hate yourself more.

You've tricked him somehow, you must have. You lie without meaning to sometimes, and you have to have lied to him because it's the only explanation. The only way to make sense of the way he says your name like it's something sacred, the way he touches you like he never wants to stop, the way he smiles at you like you've hung the sun in the sky for him. 

You've tricked him, and you've trapped him, and you want to tell him how sorry you are a thousand times over because you didn't mean to do it, but it's obvious that you have anyway. You don't know how to take it back when you don't know how it happened, but you aren't the person he thinks you are, you don't think you're even capable of it. You've made him believe somehow, some way, that you're a good person, that he's safe with you, when you know deep down he's anything but.

It's too late now for it not to hurt him, too late for it not to hurt you. But you'll deserve every minute of it, every second, and he deserves so much better than to fall victim to a trap you didn't know you'd set.

He turns to you and smiles, eyes lighting up like a thousand stars took refuge in their depths. 

Your mouth is too dry to tell him you’re sorry. 

***

You’re sorry, you’re _sorry_ , god you’re _so_ sorry.

You press it into his skin every time you touch him, you leave it lingering in your kisses, hide it behind your words, bring it with you when he takes you to bed. You know there’s only so much time you have with him before you ruin it, (him, _this_ ,) and you want to tell him as much as you can before it’s too late, so he knows that you never _meant_ to do it. Even if you were the one who stayed and let your poison leech into him. Even though staying is selfish. It’s selfish, _you’re_ selfish. And you’re sorry. 

You think your heart beats the word by now. 

Then, somewhere down the line, you realise he knows. 

He knows a lot of things. He knows things he shouldn’t, things he _can’t_. Impossible things, scary things, terrifying things, things he never should have had to know. He knows _you_. 

And he’s worked out, somewhere in those in between moments that make you forget that knowing things you don't want him to know is something he's very good at, that you don’t see yourself the way he does. He’s worked out what you’re too scared to say. He’s worked out the apologies you give when you touch him. When you kiss him. When you catch him off guard, open and vulnerable in a way you know he’d never be around anyone else. A way you struggle so much to give back. That you _want_ to give because he deserves that much at least, doesn't he? Even the thought of being so open is enough to make you freeze in fear. But he knows. 

He could read you like a book from the moment he met you, you don’t know why you thought letting him closer would make your secret any safer. He reads it on you now, he can see it when he realises that you've worked out what _he's_ worked out and you go to pull your hand out of his so you can run away, because that's the thing you're best at.

He just holds on tighter, like he wants you here anyway.

It makes something in you ache. 

***

He loves you. 

He tells you he loves you, and you already knew, but it still shakes you to hear it. 

He loves you. 

And you tell him that you’re sorry, because you aren’t- you don’t- _he shouldn’t-_

But tells you that you are. That you do. That he _does_. He tells you that the biggest lie you’ve ever told, is the one you’ve told to yourself. 

And then he holds you when you cry.

***

He loves you, and it’s not enough. 

Not enough to fix you, at least. Not enough to silence that voice in your head that tells you to push him away, that tells you don’t deserve it. Not enough to stop you from wondering when he’s going to catch on, when he’s going to leave, how long you have left. Not enough to undo the years that came before him.

But he loves you, and in some ways it’s more than enough. In some ways it’s everything. It’s a promise, another chance, a new start. It’s a spark of light in your darkness, a hopeful note to counter your cynicism. A hand in yours when you feel the loneliness is going to swallow you whole. Someone pulling you back when you make it to the ledge.

It’s him being there. In this. With you. 

It’s him _choosing_ that. 

You don’t know how long it will take for things to get better. You don’t know if you’ll ever even get _close_ to seeing yourself the way he sees you. You don’t know if you’ll be strong enough to do it in the end, but he makes you want to try. 

You’re _going_ to try.

You’re _going_ to fight it.

And maybe someday he’ll take your hand, and you’ll feel love without feeling guilty. 

**Author's Note:**

> So there's... That. 
> 
> Please do let me know what you think! This took a long time and I still don't know how I feel about it, but I like getting words in return for these words so if you enjoyed it, let me know! I hope you like it, I'd ask you to be nice but I already know you're a lovely lot.
> 
> You can catch me at kieren-fucking-walker on tumblr if you want to yell at me/talk to me about Dirk Gently/generally freak out over these two idiots.
> 
> Hopefully I'll see you around soon! I should be updating TOWOIT soon (but don't hold me to that!)
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


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